A Look Back at the 2015 NCAA Wrestling Championships

The NCAA tournament is always a crazy three days where seeds mean nothing and unfathomable upsets are the norm rather than the exception.  This year saw fifteen top 5 seeds get upset on Thursday.  Sure, the seeding criteria frustrated most coaches and left many fans scratching their heads, however, those questionable seeds set up some exciting matchups from the first whistle on Thursday morning.  We were spoiled with a close team race, a newly crowned 4-time champion, Kyven Gadson's triumph a year after losing his father, Ohio State stopping Penn State's streak of four consecutive team titles and many other storylines that did not disappoint. While the opening rounds of March Madness always steal the national headlines this weekend, there is no question that Thursday and Friday at the NCAA Wrestling Championships is the most action packed and unpredictable 48 hours in NCAA sports.  This was my 11th NCAA tournament in a row and I don't plan on missing one anytime soon.   

In our sport, teams with a relatively high number of wrestlers competing are never completely satisfied after a major event.  Even Tom Ryan, Lou Rosselli, J Jaggers and the 2015 NCAA Champion Ohio State Buckeyes are a little bittersweet about their first NCAA team title as Hunter Stieber, Bo Jordan & Kyle Snyder did not achieve their individual goals.  The same could be said for Virginia as a whole.  Watching Joey Dance, Caleb Richardson, Brandon Jeske, Blaise Butler, Jake Kettler and others fall a bit short of their goals will sting for a while, but we as a state also have a great deal to be proud of and celebrate. 

The commonwealth produced:

-12 qualifiers and three all-americans for the second year in a row (Devin Carter, Zach Epperly and Max Huntley).

-24 qualifiers and seven all-americans from Virginia colleges.

-more all-americans than Oklahoma, New York and Wisconsin.

Seven of our 12 Virginia boys represented VT, UVA, ODU & George Mason while the other five are spread among five of the finest institutions in the country (Army, Navy, Penn, Cornell and Michigan).  In years past, college coaches have said Virginia boys don't have gas tanks and can't handle the grind.  Slowly but surely, that is changing thanks to the current crop of college guys who are thriving at some of the best programs in the country.  However, these guys didn't learn it all after high school.  This positive trend is a testament to the good work being done by coaches around the state.  We will only see this trend grow if high school and youth programs continue to seek out-of-state opportunities or just venture out of their local wrestling communities.  

Perspective and having a breadth of experiences are often overlooked traits in our sport.  Wrestlers that find new workout partners or open mats outside their home program experience similar growth to those that travel regularly to compete.  Both scenarios force wrestlers to get out of their comfort zone where they must focus, block out the fact that they aren't at home, and get the most out of the opportunity.  As longtime Hayfield and hall of fame coach Roy Hill says "the three phases to improving are: learning new skills, honing those skills in training, and testing one's self in competition."  Doing the same things, with the same people, in the same place is akin to a student staying in 9th same grade for four years instead of moving up and taking new classes each year.

In my mind, and after spending three years in Texas where wrestling is still very young, we must encourage our young athletes to venture out of their normal high school or club room.  The Texas programs and wrestlers that are improving are either traveling out-of-state (Allen HS, Bo Nickal, Dallas Dynamite WC, Jack Mueller, Jacob Rubio, etc) OR just venturing out in and around Texas as Frisco Centennial HS, Churchill HS, Katy HS, Canyon Randall HS, Vici Wrestling Club and others have. 

We may not be Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois or New Jersey, but we are fortunate to have 5 D1 programs and be fairly close to major events on the east coast.  It is unrealistic to expect Virginia to be rubbing shoulders with the big boy states overnight, but let's not forget where Tech, UVA and ODU were just 10 years ago.